Patient Safety Awareness Week

Patient Safety Awareness Week

Patient Safety Awareness Week is an initiative of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). During this week, IHI seeks to inspire action to improve health care safety for patients and healthcare workers around the world.

According to IHI, “Although there has been real progress made in patient safety over the past two decades, current estimates place harm as a leading cause of death worldwide. Some studies suggest that medical error may cause as many as 400,000 deaths in the US each year, and not all errors result in death.”

Medical errors can and do occur in all types of healthcare settings.

According to a consensus reportfrom the National Academy of Medicine, estimates suggest that 5 percent of US adults who seek care in outpatient settings experience a diagnostic error.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality estimates that, at any time, 1 in 31 hospitalized patients has an infection acquired in the health setting.

Medication errors and adverse events are among the most common errors in both inpatient and outpatient settings.